Pentatonic Ruminations on (Supposedly) Hungarian Scales

Following up on the previous post, I spent a bit of time today with Harmonic Minor #4, aka Hungarian Minor, aka Simhendramadhyamam. Here's some stuff I found.

One quick thing. Anyone who's looked at the scale book or encountered me online may have noticed how grumpy I usually get about fake "ethnic" names for scales. Suffice to say I'm using the term "Hungarian" here in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way. The ideas are serious enough, though.

Hungarian Pentatonics

First here's some Bartok to get us in the mood:

The purpose of this section is to introduce three pentatonic scales. Here's the first one:

As the name implies, this ia a combination of a minor triad with the major triad a semitone below it. This idea can be extended to cover the whole of Hungarian Minor playing the VIIm6 instead. Incidentally, since VIIm6 = bVIm7b5, that takes us full circle back to where we started in the prvious post.

Still, that name is a bit workmanlike. So I'm going to baptize this the Hungarian Minor Pentatonic.

Of course, we also need a Hungarian Major Pentatonic, which is just going to be the same scale as the one above with a major third:

This is a mode of Kumoi, which is one of those scales that appear in all the scale books but nobody actually plays. Now you get to play it!

I'm also introducing this third pentatonic because I played it by accident and liked the results:

An easy way to think of it is as a major seventh with both a flat fifth and a sharp fifth. I'll call it the Hungarian Altered Pentatonic.

All three of these pentatonics sound great, at least to my ears. With a view to learning them, let's see which scales we can make by mixing them together.

Combining the Pentatonics

Here is the result of all the ways I could find to combine two Hungarian pentatonics (of either variety) to produce a heptatonic scale. I'll abbreviate Hungarian Minor Pentatonic as MiP, Hungarian Major Pentatonic as MaP and Hungarian Altered Pentatonic as AlP.

I'm thinking here of having one pentatonic at the root and "adding" another one built on another scale, so we have C MiP + E MaP for example meaning this is a C scale made by builting MiP on the root C and combining it with MaP built on the root E. Of course, for each of these we can get another scale by switching the roles of the two pentatonics in relation to the root; this will always be a mode of the original one.

There are seven scales groups to look at here. Three are fairly tame-ish, though even they're pretty exotic: Hungarian Major and Minor along with Ionian b2. The other four are far out: Kamavardani, Apeliotean (which I've never seem come up before in a musical context) and the other two that clearly need new names if we're going to spend any time with them.

As a learning plan, I would suggest the following sequence (but ignore it and learn the ones you like best):

Learn MiP and use it to build Hungarian minor. I think of this as MiP's "parent scale".

Learn AlP and use it to build Superaugmented nat3. I think of this as AlP's "parent scale".

Combine MiP and AlP to build Lydian Minor and Semidominant Suspended

Learn MaP and use it to build Apeliotean. I think of this as MaP's "parent scale".

Sounds to me like this could be covered in 1 week per idea, i.e. 9 weeks in total, with plenty of time for other things. That would certainly be a workout for the ears.

Combinations that make Bigger Scales

I only used combinations above that give heptatonic scales. There are no combinations that give fewer notes, but a lot that give octatonics anda few that give nine or even ten notes. I'm listing them here because it was easy to do the analysis and someone might find them useful. I'm particularly interested in the 10-note combinations.

NOTE: The scale spellings aren't in order, because my code doesn't do that yet and I can't be bothered to shuffle them around, sorry.

Octatonics:

Minor + Altered

1 MiP + b2 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b2 4 6

1 MiP + 3 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 3 b6 b7

1 MiP + b5 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b7 2 4

1 MiP + b6 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b6 2 3

1 MiP + b2 MiP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b2 3 b6

1 MiP + b3 MiP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 6 b7 2

1 MiP + 4 MiP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 4 b6 3

1 MiP + b5 MiP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 6 b2 4

1 MiP + b2 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b2 4 b6

1 MiP + b3 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 6 b7 2

1 MiP + 3 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 3 b6 b7

1 MiP + 4 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 4 6 3

1 MiP + b5 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b7 b2 4

1 MaP + b2 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b2 4 b6

1 MaP + 3 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b6 b7 b3

1 MaP + b5 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b7 b2 4

1 MaP + b6 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b6 2 b3

1 MaP + 7 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b3 4 b7

1 MaP + b2 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b2 4 6

1 MaP + b3 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b3 6 2

1 MaP + 3 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b6 b7 b3

1 MaP + 4 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 4 6 b2

1 MaP + b5 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b7 2 4

1 MaP + b7 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b7 2 6

1 MaP + 7 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b3 4 b7

1 AlP + 2 AlP = 1 3 b5 b6 7 2 b7 b2

1 AlP + 4 AlP = 1 3 b5 b6 7 4 6 b2

1 AlP + b5 AlP = 1 3 b5 b6 7 b7 2 4

Nonatonics:

1 MiP + 2 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 2 b6 b7 b2

1 MiP + 4 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 4 6 b2 3

1 MiP + 6 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 6 b2 4 b6

1 MiP + b7 AlP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 b7 2 3 6

1 MiP + 2 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 2 b6 6 b2

1 MiP + 6 MaP = 1 b3 b5 5 7 6 b2 3 b6

1 MaP + 2 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 2 b6 6 b2

1 MaP + b3 MaP = 1 3 b5 5 7 b3 6 b7 2

1 MaP + 2 AlP = 1 3 b5 5 7 2 b6 b7 b2

1 AlP + b2 AlP = 1 3 b5 b6 7 b2 4 5 6

1 AlP + b3 AlP = 1 3 b5 b6 7 b3 5 6 2

Decatonics (see here for an idea about how to use decatonic structures):